Tag Archives: KSS

Post Trump election days have empowered every sort of white supremacist across the states. Northeast Philadelphia, always an active, stinking cesspool of racist skinheads, has seen the reemergence of the Keystone United (previously known as KSS/Keystone State Skinheads). They have been a menace for years. Their legacy has nothing to do with “heritage.” Their “heritage” is about about a trail of murders, violent attacks, and rapes wherever they pop up. Recently, the bigots have been back at it, covering the area with their fascist propaganda, showing up along major corridors, spreading their vile filth in their old recruiting grounds.

Local Philadelphia Anti-Fascists were quick in killing their messaging dead in its tracks. They cannot be allowed back into Philly’s hoods and communities, and racists will be met everywhere they are. They will not recruit. They will not have a place to speak. They will not feel safe. No quarter, no inch, no space to breathe for fascists.

Vincent Pellegrino on the left, pictured also on the right along with his brother Nunzio (wearing the KSS Supporter shirt in the back) and Philly KSS member Joey Phy in front of Nunzio.

As One People’s Project has reported (as well as Philly.com and the Philadelphia Inquirer) Keystone State Skinheads (KSS) associate Vincent Pellegrino died on the morning of May 20th while fleeing the scene after sexually assaulting a woman in the 2600 Block of Collins Street.

Pellegrino crashed the car, which belonged to the woman he assaulted, into a wall along Westmoreland street and was pronounced dead at the scene minutes later. It is unknown whether he lost control of the car or intentionally crashed.

KSS (also known as Keystone United) had been trying desperately to fix their brand in recent years, changing between the two names frequently, and claiming in interviews that their acts of violence are all in the past. They would have us believe that these days they are just concerned nationalists. This incident demonstrates once again that KSS members and supporters are the scum of the earth, and no amount of careful media planning or timid behavior in public will make people forget this.

The Pellegrino brothers are both listed on the 6400 Block of Ditman street, only a few blocks from KSS members Patricia and Bryan Vanagaitis. Nunzio was the KSS supporter who recently attended a rally against Russian intervention in Ukraine. KSS members and other Neo-Nazis are lamenting Pellegrino’s death on social media and making absolutely no mention of the assault.

Rape and sexual assault are a global crisis. As much as we would love to blame it on Fascism, rapists (overwhelmingly but not always male) will claim to follow all sorts of political ideologies. What we can confidently say is that Fascism is and always has been a sexist and anti-woman movement.

“Woman’s world is her husband, her family, her children and her home. We do not find it right when she presses into the world of men.” – Adolph Hitler

Fuck you, Hitler.

Antifascists must support reproductive freedom, personal autonomy, an end to rape and rape culture, and oppose patriarchy and sexism. If we ignore those things in favor of making alliances with sexists who may be Anti-Nazi, we doom our movement to destroy itself with toxic people, as happens within Fascist movements routinely.

By now most of you have heard about the Misogynist murder spree of Elliott Rodgers, a so-called “nice guy” who was in reality a murderous sexist and racist to boot. Rodgers felt entitled to murder women for the “crime” of not wanting to sleep with him. He lamented online about how he couldn’t compete sexually with “inferior” black men. He had weapons and choose to turn them against unsuspecting young women because he felt entitled to do so.

Philly Antifa believe that we can live in a world without men like Elliott Rodgers and Vincent Pellegrino. That racism, sexism and hetero-patriarchy were concepts not borne from nature but intentionally engineered into our social and religious institutions as forms of control that have since become “tradition” or “just the way it is.” The fights against those evils are all unique and require different analysis and tactics, but they will either all be won or all be lost.

As we’ve written about before, every October for the past 7 years Neo-Nazis have converged on Philadelphia and held a “Leif Ericson Day Celebration” that is in reality an attempt to have a real street presence in Philadelphia for even just one day a year. Opposition to the event has increased pretty much every year, with last year’s being especially embarrassing to the boneheads because they had brought friends from as far as Texas and still could not match the numbers of the Antifascists, who prevented them from marching and drowned out their rally, sending the boneheads home with nothing to show for their efforts.

Shortly after the event we released the names and pictures of almost all the attendees, as well as listed their affiliations to KSS, Blood and Honour, The Vinlanders, and several other White Power organizations. We have also outed the primary organizers of the event and their locations in the city.

Philly Antifa, in conjunction with #Anonymous & #ro0ted #OpAntifa now bring you more attendees of Leif Ericson Day 2013’s real name and most recent known address.

Kevin McKeegan – KSS Supporter, Active with Council of Conservative Citizens and European American Action Coalition, a group founded by KSS chairman Steve Smith. 149 New Street, Glenside, PA 19038

We would like to call on local Antifa in these towns to pick up this fight and use this info to gather more intelligence to better combat your local Nazis. Their movements rely on anonymity; do not allow them to have it.

Philly Antifa would like to make it clear to the people listed below that coming to our city and contributing to KSS’ attempts to gain a foothold here, even for one ineffective day, is a provocation that will be met. Our allies are legion. All your friends do is invite you to get embarrassed and then targeted.

Edit 3/21: Brianna Jeanne was a pseudonym her real name is Briana Pietropaula. We will continue to update this article as we get more new info on these scumbags. To those of you who have been sending us info, thanks.

Back in October the Philadelphia chapter of the Keystone State “Skinheads”/KSS (also know as Keystone United or KU) invited Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists and generally ugly people to our city under the guise of a “Leif Ericson Day Celebration.” In reality, the event served as an opportunity to show that KSS has a street presence in Philadelphia. However, as the report back and subsequent identification of almost all of the identities illustrated, only a handful of those in attendance actually live in Philadelphia area, and KSS had inflated their numbers with people from as far away as Indiana, Oklahoma and Washington state. This post will serve to identify the key players in Philly KSS who were involved in bringing that mob of Neo-Nazis to our town.

Bryan Vanagaitis and Patricia Benner Vanagaitis

jesus… there are no words…

Bryan and Patricia Vanagaitis are longtime boneheads. They live with their son at a house at 6611 Ditman Street in Tacony . Their son is a little nazi too; one we encountered at Leif Ericson Day 3 years ago when he was briefly detained then released after getting caught with a knife.

The house on Ditman street serves as an important home base for KSS in Philly. In addition to hosting social events there, the Vanagaitises provide housing to boneheads when they are first arriving in the city or if they need a place to stay. One guest of theirs a few years ago was a bonehead named Drew Boyle, who was eventually expelled from KSS for being a loudmouth drunk with a habit of getting arrested on embarrassing charges while they were trying to bury their history and whitewash the KSS brand.

AJ Olsen and Briana Pietropaula

AJ Olsen is the head of Philly KSS. He spearheaded organizing the Leif Ericson day celebration as well as a new initiative by KSS called the Be Active Front, which attempt to co-opt European graffiti and Autonome imagery and language to mask their Nazism.

Briana Pietropaula (aka Briana Jeane on fb), AJ’s partner, is a supporter of KSS (originally KSS did not allow female members. it is unclear whether Patricia Vanagaitis is patched in or not but she is definitely active in the organizing and recruiting for KSS) but has yet to make that support public. So we went ahead and did it for her.

AJ is another bonehead who lived with the Vanagaitises when he first moved from New Jersey to Philly. He was then living at 2415 Tulip street in a house owned (at the time) by Briana’s father Robert. AJ was living at 2560 Memphis Street until very recently, but hemoved, possible in with Briana.

Joey Phy and Stacey Sautner

note the thor’s hammer on Stacey’s leg as well as the Celtic Cross on Phy’s arm and SS bolts on his leg.

Joey Phy and Stacey Sautner live with their daughter at 4383 Salmon Street in Bridesburg. Phy was under house arrest a few years ago when KSS was getting a lot of press, but recently has become very active, helping organize Leif Ericson day as well as attending a recent protest against Russian intervention in Ukraine.

There will be consequences for attempting to organize a Fascist or Nazi presence in Philadelphia, even if it ends in abject defeat for the Fascists as Leif Ericson day did last year. Those responsible and their supporters cannot hide.

Its that time of year again. Every October for several years the “White Nationalist” Nazis of the Keystone State Skinheads (KSS) have held their “Leif Ericson Day Celebration” in Philly’s Fairmount Park. KSS has been in decline in recent years but have been attempting a resurgence. KSS memorializes the “first European to land in America” because they feel it justifies their ludicrous claims that the US is a “white nation” belonging only to people of “pure” European Descent. And like almost all of those several years, Antifascists in the region are mobilizing to confront them.

Why oppose this event? For several reasons: KSS have been operating in PA for over ten years with relative impunity, but Philadelphia remains one of the few places in the state with an active resistance to their organizing and recruiting attempts. Areas where they are able to grow openly and unopposed are inevitably the locations of fascist violence. Several known examples (which tend to represent the tip of the iceberg) of violence perpetrated by KSS members include a 2002 assault in Feasterville, a 2003 hate crime assault in Scranton, an attempted homicide in New Stanton in 2006, and homicide charges brought against 2 members in 2007 for a double murder of 2 homeless men in Florida.

Incidents like this have (thankfully) slowed down due to KSS’s decline. However, KSS, along with Blood and Honour USA, put on a large white power concert near Altoona this year. They also attended a rally and a WP show in New Jersey, both events well attended. If we allow the Fascists to regroup and recruit, we only ensure a much more difficult battle in the near future. However, if we respond with a furious opposition willing to expose, oppose and confront these Neo-Nazis, we can smash KSS for good and put a serious dent in Blood and Honour’s attempts to coalesce various White Power groups.

In addition to stemming the tide of Fascist violence and the possibility of finishing off KSS, there is the matter of solidarity. Even if you do not feel that KSS affects you, there is no debating that their violence has very real victims. Turning a blind eye to the attempts to resurrect KSS is a tacit concession to many more incidents of fascist violence.

We will be gathering at the Thorfin Karlsefni statue along Kelly Drive in Fairmount Park at 11:00 AM with the intention of occupying their rallying location. Another group, Residents Against Racism, is also going to be protesting the Nazis. They have called for a peaceful protest and we intend to respect that as far as the area around the statue and their bloc, but we will be adhering to a diversity of tactics in all other parts of the park and reserve the right to defend ourselves from Fascist attack.

This call is for all good people who will not be silent in the face of Fascist aggression. Unity is our strength. Enough is enough is enough. They want a race war. They’re only going to get the last half.